I don’t like Erotica. I spent zero dollars on it last year (last decade, too). The trends in cover art annoy me, the proclivity for boilerplate bothers me, and never in my life have I grasped the appeal of reading words about fucking. Fucking is quite possibly the most redundant and boring subject in all prose. I get more from reading tax law.
I told you all that to tell you that I support the sale of Erotica. Recently Paypal’s operators threatened to stop processing payments with Smashwords unless it stopped selling certain books. According to Smashwords-boss Mark Coker, the big ones were, “erotic fiction that contains bestiality, rape and incest.”
Fellow readers and writers, don’t argue that it’s Erotica Vs. Moralists. It is a moral issue that people be allowed to write fiction about sex as they desire, and when not infringing upon the rights of others, that they be allowed to share, publish and charge for it. I am morally for freedom in fiction.
It is PayPal’s right not to facilitate sale of these products; it would be dangerous to legislate otherwise. Yet it’s bigger than this. We are treading on principles. Works classified as “Literary Fiction” have already been flagged for Terms of Service violation. One week in and we’re not in the realm of hypotheticals anymore, Toto. Readers and writers remember Amazon de-listing LGBT books in2009, and we are still living in a period when libraries ban classic books. This is more disturbing to me than Vladimir Nabokov getting banned; I fear for an aspiring no-name Vladimir Nabokov Jr. out there, whose career has yet to begin, trying to build a platform, who got told to click UNPUBLISH today.
But even if no Vladimir Nabokov Jr. got that message today, it doesn’t matter. This is not about a stranger deciding what is and isn’t titillating writing, and thus banning the next Gore Vidal or Norman Mailer. This isn’t about such pressures expanding to some day to suppress LGBT fiction, though it is easier to imagine than I’d like. And this is not about a corporation coming after me some day. If biases go unchecked then there’s a good chance someone will hate my transgender character, or that a snake has a crush on her, or that I depict succubae doing what they do and still place them on the “good guys” side. My novel is a safe distance from PayPal striking against rape-porn, but even if I was the next target on their list, it wouldn’t make a difference. This is unacceptable no matter where you are. That is morality.
I'd like to know what precise method is to be used to find the 'banned' books. Surely individuals aren't actually reading the books? If some computer program is searching for key words and phrases, that sounds like a procedure with a lot of room for error - serious works of literature being rejected because of an important sex scene. And I'm really surprised that rape is one of the banned themes. I don't like this at all. I wonder what we can do about it?
ReplyDeleteIf you check the first link, Coker lays out a lot of their plans. They claim they have employees actually reading all of the Smashwords submissions and, theoretically, that's where content ratings come from. It seems unfathomable, but I've never actually read a piece that rigorously went through Smashwords's inner workings.
DeleteAmazon had issues with this a while back too, when people who write incest fantasies found their books being removed (I have to wonder what they did with books about Oedipus). Personally I can't understand the desire to write such stuff but the fact remains that it should be up to the reader what they do or don't read, and if they don't want to read such material then they should simply choose not to. I mean, I can't stand Glee but I don't demand that it be banned to stop me from having to watch it - I just don't switch it on. The same applies to books. We can't have a culture predicated on freedom of speech, but then decide to censor what people can say. I don't agree with these topics but if they're banned from sale...what's next?
ReplyDeleteI believe the fear is that next lies the expansion of such censorship. God willing, what's next is actually clearing up those books wrongly censored, or softening the policy in general. There are rumblings that Smashwords is pushing back and PayPal may lighten up a little.
DeleteAn another person in agreement here. I don't read it, but that is my choice not one foisted upon me.
ReplyDeleteI have no desire to read such books, that is my choice, and that's the whole point isn't it, freedom of choice. Once someone starts telling you what you should read, soon they will be telling you what you can say, what religion you should believe in maybe even what food you should eat, where do they draw the line eh.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that you're right, PayPal has the right to do this if they choose. It doesn't make it right or fair, and that to me constitutes corporate bullying in much the same way certain corporations back bigoted ideas or politicians. Erotica is a large umbrella under which SO many writers stand under, some more than others. And the problem here is that while bestiality and incest and rape are terms that conjure up suffering or perverse actions in the most extreme cases, fiction's motives are not always so clear cut or easy to determine and define. Not to mention, this basically means that anyone who has a title with this content is affected. The erotica writers are targeted, but what about those in a gray area? I disagree with Paypal vehemently, but I understand if they feel that their morals or beliefs need to dictate they proceed this way against erotica that is obvious in its content and intention, but everything I have read about these negotiations between Smashwords and Paypal leaves a lot undefined. The sites affected all say something similar.
ReplyDeleteBookstrand.com said this: "We were informed by PayPal, without notice, and by our credit card processing company, that we are required to remove all titles at BookStrand.com with content containing incest, pseudo incest, rape, and bestiality, effective immediately."
It's equivocal in its intention. Smashwords had something similar to say. There is no mention that it is only erotica on the line (I sincerely hope I've missed some notification or press release somewhere, though). It says only that these sites are required to remove titles with content containing...etc. So does that mean that memoirs that deal with rape might also be targeted under this gray area? What about paranormal authors with books where werewolves and other creatures have sex with human characters? These are the things that worry me.
And what's even more upsetting is the thought that it's not even PayPal that is behind this. That it is the credit card companies. If we have to fight our way through financial institutions and banks for our freedoms, well, we've seen the kind of treatment they get in politics. It's damn scary to watch our rights and freedoms being sliced off, sliver by sliver.
1984, here we come...
ReplyDeletePayPal has put themselves in a very awkward (and powerful) position because they're a virtual monopoly. There are only a few competitors offering exactly what they do, and none of them are very widely adopted.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't the same as a bookseller refusing to sell your book because it doesn't fit in the range of what they sell, or a publisher refusing you because you wrote a horror novel and they sell romances. This is more like your bank saying they won't honour any cheques you write out to your landlady, because she's an ex-customer of theirs and they don't like her. To the best of my knowledge, banks aren't allowed to ban or interfere with financial transactions unless they're either a) illegal or b) the funds are insufficient to complete them.
And maybe that's the problem. PayPal acts in the place of a bank much of the time -- they're an added layer between on-line merchants and our bank accounts. But because they're not *actually* a bank, they don't have the same regulations that banks do.
To me, that's the (even) bigger issue.